Tomato business


tomato cages
Joyce’s tomato cages.

The last couple of weeks Joyce and I have been working hard to get tomatoes planted.  The master gardeners said plant them the first of April to give them as much growing time as possible before it gets hot.  They don’t like the heat.  We reworked beds and constructed tomato cages and were ready to start planting tomatoes by the first.  We finally finished the main body of the tomato orchard this week but as of Saturday   Joyce was still planting a few more in the main garden area.  It is, after all, April and she feels the inner tug of the inveterate gardener and hears the siren song of April.  Who knows, maybe July will be kinder this year.

Our duck friends are back.  They seem to enjoy having their own duck pond.  They don’t stay overnight but they come early and stay late.  They don’t mind me coming into the enclosure to hand water a couple of young plants and they don’t seem to mind Chris when he’s tending his bees.  This is the third year they’ve blessed us with their presence.  With all the perils they face, that surprises me.  The water holes must be few and far between these days, and consequently crowded.  I wonder if they’ll prefer other venues of it ever rains again up here on the llano.

Speaking of Chris and his bees, he’s set up a new hive.  I think I mentioned the additions he added to the existing ones but now he has three hives.  We’re beginning to get a few apple trees  blooming but right now there aren’t a lot of things flowering.  Hopefully that will change soon.  Saturday morning I saw a hummingbird examining the sprinkler I had going.  It had a green back, the only side I saw, so it probably wasn’t the kind that stay around all summer.  Those aren’t as colorful.  This one was probably just passing through.  With the drought, it can’t be easy to find enough flowers to sustain them as they migrate to wherever they spend the summer.

Rebecca participated in Kids, Inc. track this spring and Joyce and I went to her track meet Saturday morning.  The participants were all first and second graders and they just ran relays.  It was nice to be there to cheer for Li’l r but the part of the meet she participated in was mercifully short.  The black kids were a good deal faster than the children of other hues, generally speaking.

Chris finally got his gate put in.  There was a guinea-sized gap at the bottom and he had a concrete pad, sort of like speed bump, installed to reduce that gap since the idea behind the gate was in no small part to reduce the need to chase wandering guineas around the neighborhood trying to herd them back on SA.  The gate requires a determined effort by a grown man to open but the motor is to be installed soon so hopefully that will take care of the problem of Kari having to park on the street.

asparagus trimming
Grandma and Li’l r trimming asparagus to keep it from getting nipped by the freeze.

Now snow is predicted along with a dip in the thermometer into to tomato-killing territory.  Joyce faces imminent humiliation among her friends who warned her it is too early to plant.  She and Li’l r spent Sunday afternoon putting caps on the tomato plants to hopefully ward of the killing frost and trimming the asparagus so it wouldn’t get nipped by the predicted freeze.  More on this next time.